


Three Shall Be The Number Thou Shalt Count

by Varjo



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Genre: Ambiguous Aziraphale and Crowley Relationship (Good Omens), Beelzebub is So Done (Good Omens), Bickering, Earthquakes, Explosions, Gabriel Is So Done (Good Omens), Gabriel calls Beelzebub 'princess', Gabriel likes musicals, Humor, Minor Injuries, Odd, One Shot, Scene: Judgment in Hell, She/Her Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), Weirdness, because of her angel name you see, body-swapped Aziraphale and Crowley, buildings being rebuilt, buildings crumbling, but add a Holy Hand Grenade, is that enough for the Monty Python tag, this suit is RUINED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varjo/pseuds/Varjo
Summary: Just imagine what the judgment scene in Hell would have been like had Michael had a highly explosive kind of ace up her celestial sleeve.
Kudos: 20





	Three Shall Be The Number Thou Shalt Count

“I came to bring back the…” 

These words were immediately followed by a gasp for air and a sharp, glassy clink since, as Aziraphale saw while whirling around, Michael dropped the carafe and it shattered on Hell’s floor. Shocked, the Archangel pressed her hand over her mouth. The expression of bewilderment and incomprehension on her face was priceless – the desire to burst into malicious laughter was powerful, but the Principality, disguised within his friend's skin, managed to keep it at bay.

There you were, assuming you had already seen and done everything, and then fate came along and... and upped the ante. As they said.

“Michael!” he exclaimed, making Crowley’s seemingly endlessly long arm reach for her, “Duuuuude. Do us a quick miracle, I need a bath towel.” After all, he shouldn’t allow Holy Water to drip all over the floor of Hell, what would be the end to this?

Michael seemed to be slowly pulling herself together – she shook her head, dropped her hand, and as Aziraphale felt her glance linger on him in his Holy Water bath, he mused he detected something unsettling in her eyes. Something… fatalistic, prepared to do anything. “Nay,” she whispered, her voice sharp as a predator’s claw, “Oh no, you will not get away with it that effortlessly.”

“Ex-cuuuuse me?” Aziraphale cried, and he couldn’t help snickering upon making Crowley’s voice slide into the higher octaves. That sounded awful. A little squeaky… he would indeed have to tease Crowley with it at some point.

“What is going on here?” Beelzebub demanded. She had risen from her judge’s throne; there was grandiosity, anger and severity, but also irritated ignorance in her voice. Yet the Archangel ignored the Lord of Hell and raised her hands again, this time intertwined, palms up, and performed a miracle.

As her hands reached her chest, a circular, white-gold object rested on them, adorned with what looked from Aziraphale’s distance and position like pearls and a remarkably crooked cross.

That didn’t spell any good…

Hastur and Dagon appeared to be better informed than he; they shrieked and fled, along with the majority of the audience. Beelzebub turned white as plaster and took a step back, but she roared, “Disappear that… _thing_ at once, Michael! Away with it! I will not permit…”

But Michael didn’t seem to listen at all. Her grinning, yet focused expression betrayed no attention to anything but her goal, her opaque eyes fixed on Aziraphale, who was lying in the tub and feverishly wondering where he might have seen this object before and what it should mean to him. The pale Archangel, meanwhile, took the ball in one hand and pulled the cross out of its top with the other.

“Whoever, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it*,” Archangel Michael hissed and threw.

Beelzebub hurriedly dive-jumped behind her throne and hid there, crouched.

The bauble landed with a slightly disappointing, somewhat hollow sound squarely on Aziraphale's (Crowley’s?) chest and spun into the clear and crisp water. Only then did the angel notice the soft hiss that emanated from the object…

It exploded only a breath later.

The bathtub was blown to pieces; Holy Water gushed out and seeped into Hell’s floor, hissing, scorching, grating.

Aziraphale, whose field of view had been overlaid with bright, ah, blinding white, was hurled through the air; his back and shoulder slammed against a wall, he dropped to the floor and crumpled up, wincing and groaning, uncertain which hurt to nurse first. There was a ringing in his ears, every bone ached, every muscle seemed torn, every organ frayed – at least he had been able to protect the head from damage. Crowley would be rather displeased to get his body back in this condition. That would take quite some miracle energy to straighten out again…

The window to the auditorium shattered into a shower of tiny fragments. The few brave remaining demons now also remembered places they had to be, quite urgently and with ear-piercing shrieks.

Aziraphale thought he heard Lord Beelzebub grind her teeth in her retreat.

The angel’s field of vision cleared only slowly, gradually freed itself from the pure, sacred light that had clouded it. Looking up, he could see Michael standing in the downpour of rubble with opaque eyes, her arms spread to both sides, her head gently lifted and yet undamaged, motionless like a statue, a regular goddess…

This, however, was just the beginning. The massive wave of faith and heavenly energy that this object had emitted shook Hell to its foundations. The very earth trembled. Walls crumbled, pillars wobbled, the blast had torn a big, gaping hole into the ceiling, the floor, already weakened by the Holy Water, gave in with a groan and partially broke away; perhaps the general abysmal condition in which Hell had ever been took its toll now.

Water pipes broke and left the creatures on the lowest floor soaking wet.

The chunks that rained from the ceiling grew and the quakes reached greater and greater amplitudes.

Aziraphale, crumpling his friend’s wounded body and hastily shielding it and himself with a miracle, could not fathom how deep they were in Hell; but he anticipated that at least three or four levels would drop down on them.

His estimate was grossly understated.

The first floor above them collapsed relatively sluggishly, with a sound quite reminiscent of an old man who couldn’t quite get in or out of his armchair.

The second took significantly less time; floor elements, furniture, even individual demons came down with more energy and vehemence. The newly fallen generally weren’t gravely injured; they were able to immediately get up again, looked around perplexedly or screamed and fled from their landing site.

After that, it was no longer possible to say how many floors fell down. Everything happened much too quickly. Aziraphale hid Crowley’s head under his hands, dully remembered that his friend had warned him to be mindful of the expensive watch, but well, circumstances were what they were. Crouched as he was, he just listened, listened to the tremor and roar, listened to the screams and the disconcerted conversations… he only peeked out again as he heard a familiar voice.

“No… not again…”

A voice that reminded him curiously of himself…

That was... bizarre.

As Aziraphale raised his head again, feeling the ground below him being still, most of the debris had mysteriously vanished; only a few power cables still dangled from the ceiling in which a gigantic, frayed hole gaped, and sparked sadly. Some of the tumbling-down creatures had managed to cling to something and break their fall; some were still hanging there, in varying stages of helplessness, holding on to pipes, cables or chunks of intact floors, others had pulled themselves up and were kneeling or hunkering in relative safety, and a very few let their wings appear, white as well as black, and floated cautiously to the bottom. Some angels now were scattered between the demons, mumbling, moaning, occasionally weeping, rubbing different body parts; those who could get up contemplated the damage or offered help to those who were more severely hurt.

Here you have your apocalypse, the Principality felt tempted to petulantly throw at the Archangels, at Beelzebub, at the situation in general. Here you have your destruction and annihilation! Are you satisfied now?

And in the midst of all this mess… between wreckage and dust and injuries, he found his own body.

Aziraphale could not dissect this for a moment and blinked vacuously at himself, his blue-eyed face, his figure wrapped in cream and tartan. But he was _here_. Then what business did he have _also_ being over there?

Why was there blood on his face and hair?

And why was he shackled to this bent swivel chair?

“Crowley…” he breathed.

The demon responded, slowly, but certainly, laboriously turned the chair so he could reach the floor with all fours and crawled toward Aziraphale.

Beelzebub had crept out of her hiding place, largely unharmed as if by divine intervention, momentarily straightened up majestically beside her throne, not bothering to brush stone dust out of her hair and uniform. Her visible skin was covered with rashes and burn marks – even more so than was usual for her – and hordes of dead vermin were scattered around her feet. It was a deplorable sight. “I demand an explanation,” she grumbled irritably out into the dark, dusty atmosphere.

Uriel, battered, bloody and torn, had impacted on all fours and was slowly working her way up again – her legs, soft and unsteady, didn’t seem to obey her just yet, but she gathered her remaining strength relatively quickly. Her eyes found Michael, whose pupils and irises were slowly turning visible again, and like a new-born deer, supporting herself wherever she could, she stalked over to the other Archangel.

Sandalphon had been unlucky enough to land squarely on a piece of rubble; all he could do was to roll over onto his back and grumble and hold the injured part of his body. Some angels rushed to his aid, but they couldn’t do much.

Gabriel seemed to have tried to land on his feet; it was no surprise that his knees had given in under him and he had plunged face-first into the dirt. The Archangel struggled into a kneeling position now and, completely stunned, examined his palms, arms, chest, and legs before he thought about anything else. A primal scream escaped him.

“Ruined!” he raged, “This suit is _ruined_! I’ll never get these stains out! The tears! Is that… is that blood?” Of course it was blood; blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth and pressed its mark onto the collar of his shirt, blood on his scraped knees, bloody sweat on his palms. The jacket was torn from top to bottom, and the pants rather black than grey with soot and stone dust. Holes, fringes, loose threads everywhere… “Look at my tie! Merino wool and silk! Finest handicraft! Purest fabrics! Buttons from finest materials! And my shoes – my damn SHOES! I want to know what happened here – I demand a culprit!”

“You can say your thanks to Michael,” the Lord of Hell growled – all eyes were, in this very moment, on the pale Archangel, whom Uriel fruitlessly tried to bring back to the land of the conscious. “She threw the Holy Hand Grenade.”

Crowley, who had almost reached Aziraphale, froze. “The Holy…” he muttered.

Gabriel, however, talked him down. “The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch? DOWN HERE?”. His anger appeared barely appeaseable; he jerked his head around to his colleague. “Congratulations, Michael! Couldn’t you have imagined that such an action would tear this place asunder?”

Michael just stared at him impassively. Uriel’s words hardly seemed to get through to her; Gabriel’s certainly did, but she didn’t seem to be able to follow effectively.

Crowley had now reached Aziraphale – at least he had come close enough that the angel understood as he gasped, “Aziraphale – Aziraphale. What happened? Why am… why am I almost… naked?”

“And why am I tied to a swivel chair?” the angel countered. Damn, talking hurt…

Gabriel finally got to his feet – the anger seemed to give him strength, because he hardly wavered as he strode towards Beelzebub. “Did you authorize that?” the Lord of the Pit demanded to know, meeting the head Archangel’s eyes steadily and not a little grumpy.

“Did you provoke her?” the silvery Archangel rebuffed, stabbing at his opponent with his forefinger and towering lordly over her, “I know you… you Hell riff-raff! I know you all too well! In what way have you forced her to resort to…”

Beelzebub replied nothing – except for a glance that could be used to drill holes in mountains.

“They tried to burn you,” Crowley grumbled, just now attempting to wriggle free of the ropes holding him, “in… Hellfire. Couldn’t have let you run away I guess.”

Weirdly, this reminded Aziraphale of his rather embarrassing attempt to keep up with a merely jogging Gabriel, and he chuckled like crazy.

“Obviously I didn’t authorize that!” Gabriel sounded completely out of his depth – his voice had taken on an strained, thin, weak quality that made it difficult to see him as the sublime Archangel enthroned above everything. “Since I am well aware of what lies above Hell… have you lost your mind?”

Beelzebub remained silent.

“Or do you think _I_ have lost _my_ mind?”

“What’s so… so funny about that?” Crowley asked, forcing an annoyed, tired, angry expression on Aziraphale’s face.

“Nothing, nothing,” the angel tried to soothe the waters, “Come on, let me help you with that…” With which he crawled across the uneven floor to his friend and tried his own luck on the ropes that held him in place.

“MICHAEL!” Gabriel’s voice thundered through the vault. “What in the whole universe did you think you were doing?”

“The traitor,” the pale Archangel replied like a sleepwalker; the glassy, absent-minded look with which she looked up at the managers of Heaven and Hell only reinforced this impression. Uriel had limited herself to supporting her wordlessly, but her teeth were firmly buried in her lower lip. “I destroy… the traitor.”

Crowley’s left hand was free.

“And all of us too?” How unlikely that Lord Beelzebub could still be sarcastic, biting and serene. Her burns were slowly subsiding, but if Aziraphale were to make an estimate, he would think they would pain her for a few more days. Maybe a week. “Angels and demons both just to be thorough, yes?”

Annoyed and weakly grumbling, Gabriel shook his head and threw up his hands – only after he had wiped blood and sweat from his face with the sleeve of the ruined garment. “I am no longer interested in arguing,” he muttered, working a miracle and standing there in a flawless, posh new suit, “Congratulations, Michael, you will command the angels and demons at rebuilding everything here. It will be entirely your responsibility and I want the work done in, oh, a week or so. The sooner the better. And no, I don’t care that you’re a soldier, you will damn well do what I tell you to.

You are probably wondering why I am not commanding you to do it all by yourself? Well, Michael, you don’t deserve that. It would be too easy. You can trust yourself and your own competence after all. You shall see what I am saddled with every day and night of my existence – for centuries! You shall feel the brainlessness and rebelliousness and the exasperating INCAPABILITY of everything that lives and breathes here! That is why angels and demons will rebuild this accursed tower side by side, and anyone who is discorporated will be completely on you!

As for me, I’m going to Earth – somewhere there has to be a theatre that plays ‘Sound of Music’, or at least ‘Evita’ or ‘Cats’ or ‘Mamma Mia!’. Or something. Coming, princess?”

Beelzebub looked around briefly, as if it had been unclear who Gabriel had addressed – but then she quickly linked arms with the silvery one, and the two managers disappeared into nothingness with a silent but painfully bright flash of lightning.

An angel, tall and scrawny, had now arrived nearby Aziraphale and Crowley who had since been completely freed. She introduced herself as Assiel, a doctor, and asked if they needed any help. 

“It perhaps won’t hurt to…” Aziraphale started, but Crowley pushed her away with a reptile-like hiss. (It was also odd for the bookseller to hear this sound emanating from his own lips and tongue and throat.) Assiel seemed confused indeed, which only reminded the angel more palpably that they had changed bodies; but she refused to be turned away and grabbed Aziraphale’s upper arm as the angel tried to help his friend to his feet.

“Let’s just get out of here,” the demon murmured, barely able to maintain his balance on the shaky angel legs.

“Let me take a look at you beforehand, make sure nothing is bro…” Assiel renewed her offer.

“Don’t touch me, poultry,” Crowley snapped, and Aziraphale raised a hand soothingly. It was disconcerting to see such uncharacteristic anger on his own face.

“Dear, don’t be so uncouth,” he asked his friend, “she merely wants to help.”

“ _’She merely wants to help’_ … yes, and I just want to get out of here. Plus, haven’t we just seen what happens if you lot want to ‘help’? Let’s go, angel, just go…”

Aziraphale allowed himself an apologetic look at Assiel – she only gave a shrug – before hobbling around the demon in his skin and moving toward the exit, past Michael (who was by now holding her head in her hands, making the impression of having a bad migraine) and Uriel. Neither of them made any attempt at stopping them, nor the impression of even having noticed.

Now they had to see if there was a miracle-free way out of this mess…

**Author's Note:**

> * This line, as well as the title, are cited from: Jones, Terry; Gilliam, Terry (directors) - Cleese, John; Gilliam, Terry; Idle, Eric; Chapman, Graham; Palin, Michael; Jones, Terry (script): Monty Python and the Holy Grail. UK 1975.


End file.
